Chronology of School and Myself
A conversation between Christine and I (prompted by her mother and she) prompted me to think about why school hasn’t captured my attention, like so many expect it should, and I came up with this:
I don’t generally set goals that are related to school because school has failed me, and I shall candidly offer a list of instances.
In fifth grade, I learned HTML
While in the 5th grade attending Goldsboro Elementry, I learned HTML, CSS, and more. This was solely on my own, and has prompted me to learn most of what I know regarding computers now. At school, there was no opportunity to learn about HTML or any sort of further activity in that regard.
In seventh grade, I learned PHP
Two years after learning HTML, I decided to set out on learning PHP – a programming language to help make websites more effective.
The school offered classes on web-design, but they were incredibly low-level basic HTML courses that weren’t up to date with standards at all. The classes were also very quick to say “no, you’re wrong” when I pointed out issues in their code.
After exploring most of their courses on computers, I then took a class on networking and how to setup networks, theory, etc. The class was taught by, essentially, a permanent substitute and we read out of a book. The majority of students in that class were there to mess around and not take a real class.
In eighth grade, I managed servers
I was on my middle school’s “Tech-Team.” A team that was designed to help manage all the computers (quite a large number, being a computer-oriented school) and occasionally taught the IT manager tricks and concepts regarding computers.
One day, the main server for the school campus was acting up, and none of the paid IT guys could figure it out, so they called me out of English class to take a look at it. I don’t remember the one particular issue, however I was the one that eventually figured out and fixed the problem.
Unrelated to school, I had also begun running a server at home. This server didn’t do much, simply allowed me to further my development of programming knowledge, but it was my first introduction to Linux and servers.
In tenth grade, I started a business
This next anecdote of my chronology of schooling-vs-me, I start a business.
Right around February 1, 2007, I started a business hosting websites and providing services for people.
I started out with a single client paying me to host streaming software for various purposes. I now have several clients, and over half of which are paying me for entire years of hosting at a time.
This next month, on the first of February, my business will celebrate one year of being in business, and it will also celebrate something very few businesses are able to declare: profit. Thats right, guys, the vast majority of businesses rarely turn a profit within the first year or two, and mine will be one of the few.
Where are the classes for me to learn about handling clients? Running businesses? Filing taxes? Maintaining servers on a professional scale?
The only classes offered on any of those topics would be economics, and that barely even scratches the surface of any potentially useful information or topic, and I’ve probably already learned that information out of necessity anyway.
And Thus…
In a critical time of the development of my relationship and personal opinion of necessity of school, I lost faith in it for it’s inability to teach me what I found truly useful. Many would argue that school is equally necessary, and I believe that. The problem is that school is the limiting factor. I’m ready to move on with life, and school is holding me back. I’m not sitting around wasting time popping pills and drinking my Saturdays away, I’m doing something with my life.
Update: 1/28/2008: HTML classes in schools generally (and in my case, did, until high-school) utilize programs to write HTML code, instead of writing the code yourself. These programs produce invalid, incorrect, and bloated code, and is not considered a good idea even a little bit.